A community driven project for Ruby source code to run natively on Microsoft's .NET framework has shut down, faced by progress from an official Microsoft effort.
Rather than repeat the work on Microsoft's own IronRuby, Ruby.NET is closing its doors just three months after its latest milestone release, and following an initial …

Might be a Good Thing

Folks know I'm no Borg apologist - I make a good chunk of my living moving people *off* Microsoft - but I think we (FLOSS folks and Ruby developers) are going to be better off because of it.

We get one first-class Ruby implementations instead of two B-level efforts, sooner than either would have been 'ready' otherwise. And for those who really, viscerally can't stand anything Microsoft touches.... since the whole point is to bring a toolchain that is already running quite well, thank you, on FLOSS systems to the Dot-Nyet platform... you're shooting yourselves and everybody else in the short and curlies, since we're talking about a platform that Microsoft already *own*.

Of course there's going to be "proprietary" ".Net-only" changes and "extensions". That was a given on both efforts as I understood them pretty much from the get-go; there *had* to be, to work effectively with .NET. The Microsoft cheerleaders will see this (rightly enough) as another feather in their cap; the users who want to use IronRuby as a "stepping stone" to eventually transition off .NET know that they're going to have to rewrite some code, and the free-at-any-cost true-GNUers probably were never targeting Ruby-on-.NET anyway.

@Lance: speaking as a long-time true-GNUer, it's time to take your meds now.

Motto

Do recall the Microsoft motto and mantra. Repeat after me:

Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.

Only fools think that Microsoft has changed its tune after all these years. This is only the latest victim. Watch and learn as "Microsoft's effort" vanishes from the open source domain over time (assuming it's even there to begin with), leaving that company in charge of yet another proprietary, lock-in product.

From computer languages to network protocol stacks to file formats and beyond, it's the same story over and over ad nauseum for the last 20 years or more.

MS-PL

Ah yes that's the one that grants "a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce its contribution, prepare derivative works of its contribution, and distribute its contribution or any derivative works that you create."

Which as far as I can see means that MS can take your contribution, include it in their commercial products, thus enhancing their value, and then sell them for squillions of dollars *.

Great, work for MS without all the tedious hassles of having to go to Redmond, sit in team meetings, have chairs slung at you by the lunatic Ballmer , or, erm, getting a salary. Oh hang on...

* Of course, you're free to try and compete with them, and as any fule kno, if you're an ISVs who releases a product that's already integrated into Windows/VS/Office or whatever, people will beat a path to your door with great big sacks bursting with cash. Wait, no, erm, that's not... oh.

Pining for the Norwegian Blue ...

Another one bites the dust. An ex Programmer in Sauce and Source out in the Open Planes. Ah well....... the Apache nation has Heaps More Braves and Squaws. They're Virtually Everywhere and can Pick up and Run Immaculate CodeXXXX with Only the Faintest of Semantic Signals.

@Lance E Sloan

Big Picture Poker ....Rocky Smokey Mountains High Stakes

"if you're an ISVs who releases a product that's already integrated into Windows/VS/Office or whatever, people will beat a path to your door with great big sacks bursting with cash. Wait, no, erm, that's not... oh."

The Bankers could certainly do with fronting that ISV ..... IT'll make them an Obscene Fortune which they can Put to Good Beta Best Practise Use. From Pariah to Hero in One Simple Move....... for CheckMate and a New NeuReal Great Game with them Flush in Control.

@Motto

"Watch and learn as "Microsoft's effort" vanishes from the open source domain over time (assuming it's even there to begin with), leaving that company in charge of yet another proprietary, lock-in product."

You mean like how Microsoft killed Java with J++/J#? Actually, if it weren't for the good OSS frameworks that sprung up to save it, Sun would have managed to kill Java all on its own.